Oh, getting anyone to stop writing was never my intention. It would be rather hypocritical of me. No, this is just (with the risk of sounding pretentious) an exploration of the writing process. I know I'm not going to stop writing either.

The piece itself kind of sums up my thoughts on it in the first few lines: It feels like a cheap trick. I certainly appreciate what you were trying to do, and near the end particularly this drives in an interesting direction, but the concept itself is basically unoriginal, and I feel it's been executed better elsewhere. It could read well as the author channeling some deeply self-destructive urges through their fiction, as a kind of bizarrely contradictory subconscious meta-fictive suicide note…but that's a significant reach that draws only from the last few lines, and, frankly, there isn't enough in the piece as it stands to justify that as a supportable reading. That's not to mention the problems you would get making that coherent in a community environment where the author is well known to everybody. Meta-fiction as a perverse expression of the death drive would be novel and engaging, but I'm not sure how it would work in the context of this site.

Hesitant downvote. This is not bad for what it is, but I don't find what it is to be very interesting or effective.

I do not agree with this part. I am expressing why, and then explaining ways I feel the author could've made it work within what I perceive to be the boundaries of the piece. The conceit rings as false to me, because it is assuming a tension that I do not believe exists. Based on material culled from the tale, I'm articulating the possibility of a different sort of tension, one that I think falls well within its purview. No offense was meant, and I'm not sure why you're taking any.

I think what Djoric was taking offence with is some of the…assumptions you seem to have made. In short, you are (and this is somewhat of a habit of yours, I've noticed) prone to insert your own theories about the meaning of texts you review, sometimes without much to back your reading. In this case, you make something very obtuse ("eta-fiction as a perverse expression of the death drive" sounds pretentious even to me) out of something which is really quite simple.

I'd be a liar and a son of a bitch if I tried to deny enjoying prolix pseudo-academic word vomit…but, on the flip side, I also don't think what we're discussing here is really all that simple. The conceit as you wrote it here is that authorship comprises a sort of cruel godhood, and the tension is between our desire to be a god (or to keep writing shit for fun, if you like) and the putative thoughts, emotions and feelings of the "people" we're writing. I think that's a fairly complex idea with a lot of interesting philosophical implications…and I'm not trying to guess your motivations, here, but I think you probably feel at least a little bit the same way, because why else would you write it?

Where I think we part ways is the question of whether or not that's the most interesting idea you follow up on in the actual piece (and, apologetically, how well that original idea is executed). I feel that, based on the very dark, emotionally laden request on the narrator's part that we the readers "think no more", there's a better vein of tension that can be tapped here, but hasn't been; likewise, I feel that the tension you do tap into is neither the most effective nor the most honest, based on the interaction between “you” as the author and 1595 as the narrator. On a base level, I don't think anybody here really believes that the act of writing creates some actual separate entity. So then what is the story supposed to be about, and more importantly, why should we care what it has to say? Certainly we can entertain the hypothetical you're forwarding, but, again with apologies, I think that's been handled better, and enough times that this doesn't add to the conversation. (Hence my downvote.) Or, we can discuss another issue that I feel is raised but not addressed within the context of the piece as you’ve written it. That’s the target of my criticism here: Not that I think your tale needs to be some other, different tale, but that I think for your tale to be most effective as the thing that it is, you need to re-evaluate your focus within the material that already exists. So, my argument:

I think the obviously authored nature of this piece, the “author’s” presence within it as a character, the narrator’s conflict with that other character, and the narrator’s own position as an aspect of that “author” present an avenue to discuss fiction as an expression of the death drive, as an instinct to return to an inanimate state (trenchant given that we’re talking words on a page) and, paradoxically, achieve immortality through the cessation of life. TOOT TOOT ZIZEK TRAIN COMING:

This blind indestructible insistence of the libido is what Freud called "death drive," and one should bear in mind that "death drive" is, paradoxically, the Freudian name for its very opposite, for the way immortality appears within psychoanalysis: for an uncanny excess of life, for an "undead" urge which persist beyond the (biological) cycle of life and death, of generation and corruption. This is why Freud equates death drive with the so-called "compulsion-to-repeat," an uncanny urge to repeat painful past experiences which seems to outgrow the natural limitations of the organism affected by it and to insist even beyond the organism's death

The narrator’s plea that we “think no more” reads, to me, as an invitation to consider the possibility that (as an external projection of the “author’s” internal state) text-Dmatix is struggling both with the nature of his own creation (as an artifact of Dmatix-Dmatix?) and the paralyzing fear that his own fictional scribblings are, by virtue of their pure and lifeless symbolism, more alive than he himself is. When the narrator turns against the “author”, my argument is that there is no conversation at all, because both are as one; my argument is that text-Dmatix is confronting the nightmare of subjectivity, and, finding no “I” within himself, externalizing this symbol of “undeath” (the narrator) to try and restore the universe of meaning.

So the conflict I see at the heart of the piece isn’t that being “created” is harming the things text-Dmatix writes on this site (and, more broadly within the text, everything being written and written-through-reading on the site). The conflict I see is the “author” fearing that, without creating these symbols, he himself does not exist.

So what we get after we are deprived of symbolic identifications, "demonarchized," is nothing. The "Death" figure in the middle of the crown, is not simply death, but the subject himself reduced to the void, Richard's position when, confronted with Henry's demand to resign the crown, he basically replies "I know no I /to do it/!"

But to address the complaint about the rightness of my criticism here, and the basis on which I've argued for my downvote: I certainly agree that, as it stands, there is not "much to back [my] reading" over yours. So what that leaves me with is your reading, which, ignoring the potentialities I think I've outlined as seeing within the piece, is at least the most coherent I'm conjuring from the top of my head. Which returns me to my original problem, and that is: With respect (because I think you're a good author) and no intent to cause offense (because you seem like a decent enough guy), I don't think it works very well. It's been done too many times, and this one isn't done well enough for me to ignore that. And that is why I have to downvote it.

"I think that's been handled better, and enough times that this doesn't add to the conversation."

Djoric, FlameShirt and others put it quite nicely: this was just a short, one page long fictuous story made entirely for purpose of ENTERTAINMENT. Any deep psychological and eschatological revelations that we may have from digesting such a product are secondary. Secondary. Why, do you ask? Because this is ultimately an entertainment site. Sure, there are many thought-provoking and excellent pieces here, but let's not lose the whole point SCP exists.

I mean no disrespect, but you remind me of one critic who wrote about Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (an exquisite piece of a thriller, I may add, succulent and juicy, ripe with physical pain and mental distress), that "it's not so good, and «Groundhog Day» told the story of a repeating time loop better" (citation may not be exact). Yes… As there is no really good point comparing a heartwarming comedy to a bloody supernatural thriller, I find no good reason to demand from a one page long piece the depth of Frank Herbert's "Dune", Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", Lem's "Fiasco", Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" (an excellent book for all who love conspiracy theories…) or P. K. Dick's novels. It is just not FAIR.

Also, I must say I'm biased - I enjoy reading books (read hundreds of them so far), but the literary criticism I view with passionate hate.

Why? Because it's so souless. It takes a product of art, something that is being made anew within the mind of each receiver (as Dmatix pictured so nice), and tries to mold it into a single meaning. What works for one must work for all, surely? It strives to kill spontaneity, plans to assimilate us all into one-minded Collective, it wants us to enjoy our literary meal in just one way.

When I read a book, I tend to stay afar from any words of introduction. They will spoil the plot. They will scrape the mystery from the bones of wonder. Let's look at an example. I've read some Henry Kuttner's novels, including one anthology called the "Book of Iod". And there, the good redactor wanted me to know that he thought the name "Vorvadoss" came from "Barbadoss". Needless to say, it spoiled my mood a lot. I don't want to know every detail behind every sentence - it's just like viewing a spectacle in the theatre from behind the scene. Do I really care that the fat guy with glasses holds together the paper-mache trees? Do I really need to know what is his name and what did he eat for dinner? What relevance to my enjoyment of the story has the fact that H. P. Lovecraft lived in a dark room?

Azradun, I posted a Mod Post below, at the bottom of the other line of conversation. I meant it to include the entirety of this thread discussing "reading for analysis vs. reading for fun vs. overlapping the two". This post especially has nothing to do with the Tale it's in the thread for. I'm allowing you this one because the Mod Post wasn't immediately after your post, so some confusion is permissible, but this is usually an offense that carries disciplinary action.

But beyond that, don't double-post; if you think of something relevant to a post you've already made, just edit that post to contain your new thoughts.

This boils down to a clarity problem, which is on me. I'm explicitly not trying to psychoanalyze Dmatix; that's the meaning behind my remark about the difficulty of making such a concept coherent in a community where the actual author is so well-known. I'm driving at the author-as-text that we've got in the tale itself, the abstracted "source" of the writing of a piece that's all about the cruelty of writing.

The unmistakeable tension here, to me at least, is of the very obviously authored nature of this screed against authorship, played sincerely in the text to the point that Dmatix is mentioned in the context of some outside other. This text-Dmatix, and not Dmatix-Dmatix, is who I'm discussing when I talk about the author of the piece (though the tension between those two is in itself probably an interesting conversation). No disrespect to Dmatix-Dmatix, who is a good writer and seems like a solid enough guy, but I don't care if he's actually self-destructive, or if he loves his mother, or whatever pop psych bupkis you care to throw out there; what I care about is that he made himself a character inside the realm of the piece, and the reflexivity of that holds potential to me. Because text-Dmatix isn't Dmatix-Dmatix.

So who is he? Analyzing the projections that character makes seems a promising avenue to ideas of genuine literary merit, in contrast to what I think you probably over-generously referred to as "amateur psychoanalysis". That gives us a legitimate conversation about fiction as a form of aspirational immortality through the avenue of self-destruction, and how that idea might interact with reading-as-authorship, or with (as you point out downthread) our perception of free will and godhood. Now: Is there enough in the piece as-is to support that reading? I don't really think so, and I've stated that. But I think the potential is absolutely there…and for the little value of my downvote, that's my constructive criticism to Dmatix-Dmatix.

"author channeling some deeply self-destructive urges through their fiction" (your first comment)

"This text-Dmatix, and not Dmatix-Dmatix, is who I'm discussing when I talk about the author of the piece" (your second comment)

"You're not my author. Dmatix, or whatever he's calling himself these days." (in the article)

I think you are mistaking a narrator with author of the piece. These two are completely separate concepts.

"The unmistakeable tension here, to me at least, is of the very obviously authored nature of this screed against authorship, played sincerely in the text to the point that Dmatix is mentioned in the context of some outside other. "

What does "obviously authored nature" in the context of a piece written by a known author even mean? Was there any mystery regarding that it was a written piece of narrative fiction, and by whom? I'm sorry, I simply can't understand this point of view.

If you'd analyzed the narrator instead of author, there wouldn't be any of this misunderstanding. But that's just my opinion and I may be wrong (as has been frequently in the past).

I believe it was Isaac Asimov who said, when asked why he wrote some of his earliest science fiction, something along the lines of: "for a penny a word, to get myself through school." Sometimes, a story is just a story, and not a psychological treatise. Enjoy it for what it is. Just my fifty-seven cents.

Sorry for this being weirdly positioned; the conversation kind of jutted around a bit. In short. Aburr is permitted his opinion, as confusingly deranged as it may be, and I don't see a need for you guys to clutter up this discussion thread with a conversation that is two parts "I have read many books about what reading books means" and three parts "MOOOOOOM, HE'S HOLDING ME TO A HIGHER STANDARD THAN I FEEL IS APPROPRIATE." The conversation is directed towards the piece, yes, but it seems to be getting a little more emotional/generally wordy than need be and I think you've all made enough of your points that any ensuing debate/discussion/argument can be held elsewhere.

If you guys want to continue this conversation, all of you can PM each other via Wikidot.

I'd rather interpret this as a clever twist upon the concept of "creator's dilemma" - in most cases, suffering of the literary subject hangs on its author. But here, it goes a bit further, blaming the one who recreates the event within their own brain, and introducing variance. Less obvious, and I like it.

Alternate interpretation would be an allegory of chaos vs stasis - the subjects of the story suffer from the aforementioned variance, which brings them life but ultimately pain - so they want to cease, and return to the static state. Is it death drive? Not… exactly. Due to the nature of narration, their pain cannot be divorced from their existence. Our existence is defined, theirs not. We have the means to 'order' our fate, they don't.

I think it is reading too much into the psychology of the other person, and a jump to a 'meta-fictive suicide note' conclusion based upon a short text is premature.

Alternate interpretation would be an allegory of chaos vs stasis - the subjects of the story suffer from the aforementioned variance, which brings them life but ultimately pain - so they want to cease, and return to the static state. Is it death drive? Not… exactly. Due to the nature of narration, their pain cannot be divorced from their existence. Our existence is defined, theirs not. We have the means to 'order' our fate, they don't.

See, this is probably just my personal philosophy, but it feels like we're in the same position as they are, on a grand scale.

In that we are influenced by collated semi-random events that make us who we are, and shape our future actions? And also, the imprinted algorithms of our instincts from the inside? Well, yes. But free will is such a fine illusion, and so comfortable. I use it to brighten my day!

You know, it's odd, but this doesn't work for me, and I usually like metafiction. I feel like it's too direct. And in making itself so direct, its inconsistencies become too obvious. The author/character collision is interesting when the character has properties in addition to those created by the author - but when it's spelled out explicitly as being only what the author writes, that conflict is gone.

I understand your point, though I have to say that the inconsistency is part of what I wanted to show. What makes this scary for me is that the characters, while indeed only fictional constructs, are aware of what they are just from being created in the first place. Because of that, the act of creating becomes evil by nature, because this is the only possible outcome- the twisting of a conscious being. That there isn't a conflict is because there can never be a conflict.

I think that could work, but I don't see it in this text. It's stated explicitly that the only property a character has is the property granted to it by the author. So unless the author explicitly writes "they are aware of what they are", they cannot be aware of what they are.

You could do a second-level meta regression there and say that the existence of this story is what gives them that awareness - that could also work - but that's not really present in the text as it currently is, at least to my perception.

It's stated explicitly that the only property a character has is the property granted to it by the author. So unless the author explicitly writes "they are aware of what they are", they cannot be aware of what they are.

I might be misinterpreting, but I've always felt that writers of articles on this site create SCP objects with the knowledge that the Foundation doesn't know everything about them, and thus the objects inherently possess properties that are unwritten and unknown.

For what it's worth, I really liked this piece. For me, it's a peek into the infinity of creation through the use of words that result in shared thoughts.